This morning, it finally happened. Gretchen called from the reception area and told me, “Ahmed is here, and I’m taking the rest of today and all of tomorrow off. I’ll call from home and cancel your remaining appointments through noon. You can cancel the rest through six tonight yourself.” Then she hung up. And no, I’m not going to fire her, and regular readers of this Web log would be quick to apprehend why. “Ahmed,” as he calls himself, isn’t supposed to just show up like that, and this was the first time he simply walked in without warning. Darting into my desk drawer for a double dose of pathologist’s camphor, I fortified my nostrils for the shock and walked […]

Practically everyone in Washington, as well as virtually everyone else in the United States of America with an IQ over 98, has been glued to some type of screen or another for the past week, watching the Supreme Court confirmation hearings. And given the circumstances, that’s quite understandable. For the many international readers of this Web log, who may not follow our Congress, President and Supreme Court with quite as much regularity as we here in the USA have been for the last month, here’s the situation: ( 1 ) Our Constitution, a legal document drafted in the late eighteenth century, and amended twenty-seven times since then, is basically the only thing that holds our nation together; ( 2 ) […]

Regular readers of this Web log would probably not be surprised to learn that I know Q. Actually, it would be surprising if they were surprised to learn that I know Q. In fact, I’ve known Q for years, and there are a couple of common misconceptions about him that I feel I should correct, right up front. First of all, Q isn’t a committee, a cell or a cabal – Q is a single individual. Secondly, although he’s not currently a high-ranking military officer (as many claim), it is definitely true that he used to be one – a major general – but he’s retired now. His present position is serving as the Assistant Administrator of the Directorate on […]

This afternoon, I had a consultation with Dr. Runkkari Paskanaama, Special Attaché for Political Affairs at the Embassy of Finland here in Washington. He brought a bottle of Lakka, the Finnish Lapponia Cloudberry liqueur, which isn’t easy to find in DC. “From the embassy’s own stock,” he confided as he placed it on the coffee table by the couch. For a moment, he turned to gaze past the couch, out the picture window behind it, which overlooks the White House. A visible shudder ran through him, after which he shook his head and took a seat in the chair immediately in front of my desk. “Mr. Collins,” he began, leaning close toward me, “Ambassador Kauppi asks that I convey our […]

Cerise is away on vacation, and Veronica disappeared about a week ago with a soft drink industry lobbyist, so this morning, I was alone at my home in Great Falls, Virginia – except for the company of my cat, Twinkle of course. Cerise invited me to accompany her, actually, but on this occasion, her vacation was to a rather remote region of the United States where the states of Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee meet. She went there for a festival of something known as contra-dancing, which is derived from English country dancing, but has evolved into its own rather eccentric genre. I like dancing, but “contra” as its aficionados call it, involves intricate patterns of interaction among the […]